Manage surface care across a region or all of the U.S. and Canada—with ease.

June 6, 2017

National Accounts. Wherever you go, there we are.

When you’re juggling multiple facilities, teams, and budgets, finding a service provider that’s both reliable and scalable is essential. Consistently coordinating with different vendors to maintain clean, healthy and attractive facilities can be a timely and difficult task.

Each facility has different surface types, all with unique traffic patterns and care needs. Some cleaning methods and chemistry can extend the life of your assets and others can severely reduce it, requiring costly restoration or even more costly, replacement.

Why do FM’s find such inconsistent service?

It shouldn’t be difficult for image conscious businesses to coordinate surface care across all their locations so their floors and surfaces do not detract from the company's image. Hiring a partner who understands the unique surface needs of each building, ensuring they are cleaned and maintained and that doesn’t charge extra for something one building needs and another does not, shouldn’t be so hard to find.

We agree.

We’ve been a trusted, strategic partner for brand conscious businesses for over 20 years, offering carpet, stone, terrazzo, specialty surfaces and textile care. APEX uses a holistic mindset and a customized approach that is highly effective, fiscally responsible and sustainable for surfaces all across your facilities – local, regional and national.

Sourcing loves regional accounts, most FM’s don’t. Why?

While the siren song of vendor consolidation and national account pricing seems to make Sourcing Managers giddy, most FM’s shudder when hearing their local provider is being replaced by a regional or national provider. When national accounts fail, it’s usually because there are too many layers of subcontracting and not enough overall management across the portfolio of facilities. The reality is, no one company can self-perform in every location across a national portfolio and everyone has to sub-contract some portion of any national account. The key to success is in the relationships with subcontractors, proactive project management and having a solid plan for each facility.

Which model is right for you?

Franchise or Independent?

There are two primary business models used to manage national accounts: Franchise networks and Independent networks. Since everyone has to subcontract on some level to manage a national account, the client ends up with one or the other. Which is more consistent? Many companies think national account performance consistency comes from the franchise model. It doesn't. The key to consistency is building, and using strong relationships over time with professional, local providers in each market.

APEX, an independent company having a wide geographic footprint of its own, has a broad network of trusted partners built over twenty years of service throughout the US and Canada to whom we subcontract, and an account management process that guarantees 100% transparency. Using this network, and our own service locations, we manage hundreds of facilities across North America, ensuring each surface is maintained the same way.

Our proven process includes developing quality programs with local providers, that allow each local FM to have a voice in developing what works in their facility. At the same time, we also provide the transparency, vendor consolidation, diversity spend and consolidated invoicing that is so important to Sourcing. Managing strategically while servicing locally is the APEX way.

What should you be asking your surface care provider?

Some questions to ask your provider are: How is the contract actually being managed? Can the contract holder help contribute directly to diversity spending goals? Does the provider (or franchisor) have the technology, team, and support to manage the contract? Most importantly, are they actually providing any services directly or just passing the invoice through.

In the end, everyone sub-contacts, so pick the company who is actually self-performing a large portion of your portfolio and has the experience, technology, financial resources and management systems in place to assure your contract will be handled right…without a lot of unnecessary overhead. The average franchisee pays 6-8% franchise fee up to the franchisor…who do you think is paying for that?

Our partners uphold our standards of cleaning and use our approved methods to ensure you are getting exactly what each building needs without cutting corners. This not only extends the life of your surfaces which saves you money but each facility is cared for and maintained with our best practices plan, giving each surface the right attention and cleaning. So your building in Austin, TX will look just as good as the one in San Diego, CA.

No Bait and Switch.

In an industry where it is, unfortunately, common to sell one thing and deliver another, we find ourselves in a small crowd of surface care providers that don’t work that way; in fact, we refuse. It is a core value of ours to do what we say and consistently deliver on our promises. That’s why when you choose APEX Surface Care for all your facilities, we promise to deliver a high standard of clean across your portfolio because we understand how important your image is to your brand.

Being a facilities manager means you are great at juggling everyone’s wants, needs, texts, emails, and tweets. The list is neverending. Our mission is to remove hassles, not pile on more; to solve problems and not add to them. Let us consolidate your vendors into a single scalable solution for your floors and interior assets.

Call us today to see how we can help your facilities look better than they have in years…and how to keep them that way